LA CROSSE – On Jan 8 Bishop Raymond L.
Burke of the Diocese of La Crosse published a
pastoral letter to Catholics in his
Diocese on their political responsibility in upholding the value of human
life, and issued a canonical
notification that Catholic lawmakers who continue to support procured
abortion or euthanasia may not receive Holy Communion.

The release of the two documents follows last month’s
reports in the secular press that Bishop Burke had sent private letters to
three Catholic legislators in the Diocese, warning them of the spiritual
dangers of their votes against human life. The reports came closely on the
heels of the announcement that John Paul II had appointed him the next
archbishop of St. Louis, a post he will assume Jan. 26.

The 10-page letter, entitled “On the Dignity of Human
Life and Civic Responsibility,” is addressed to all the faithful of the
Diocese of La Crosse. It is intended to set forth a number of guiding
principles that should aid Catholic voters in forming their consciences
and making political judgments.

Key among these principles is the inviolability of
human life. “As Catholics, we are always held to defend human life from
conception to natural death,” the letter says. “The Church teaches that
human life should be protected at every stage of development, whether in
the womb, in the wheelchair or on the death bed.”

The letter points out that the defense of human life
has been compromised by a mistaken notion of the separation of Church and
state. It also addresses positions adopted at least tacitly by some
Catholic politicians that their efforts to help the poor and marginalized
“make up” for not voting consistently in favor of life, and that
legislators in a democracy are bound to vote according to the will of the
majority of their constituents.

The four-paragraph canonical notification, published
in the Jan. 8 edition of The Catholic Times, the newspaper of the
Diocese of La Crosse, calls upon Catholic legislators in the Diocese “to
uphold the natural and divine law regarding the inviolable dignity of all
human life.” “To fail to do so is a grave public sin and gives scandal to
all the faithful,” it says.

The notification bases its authority in part on a
passage from the Doctrinal Note on some questions regarding the
participation of Catholics in political life, released by the Sacred
Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith in January 2003. That passage
cites Pope John Paul II’s teaching, reflecting the constant doctrine of
the Church, that “those who are directly involved in lawmaking bodies have
a grave and clear obligation to oppose any law that attacks human life.
For them, as for every Catholic, it is impossible to promote such laws or
to vote for them.”

“Catholic legislators who are members of the faithful
of the Diocese of La Crosse and who continue to support procured abortion
or euthanasia may not present themselves to receive Holy Communion,” the
notification states. “They are not to be admitted to Holy Communion,
should they present themselves, until such time as they publically
renounce their support of these most unjust practices.”

According to Bishop Burke, the notification became
necessary as an outcome of his correspondence with Catholic legislators.
None of the three lawmakers he wrote to had accepted his invitation for a
private meeting to discuss their voting records, and their letters
revealed that they were not open to changing their positions.

“After several exchanges of letters, it became clear
in all three cases that there was no willingness to conform to the
teaching of the Church,” he explained. “So the notification became a
necessity in order that the faithful in the Diocese not be scandalized,
thinking that it is acceptable for a devout Catholic to also be
pro-abortion.”

The bishop said that the simultaneous release of the
two documents was a coincidence, since the pastoral letter had been in the
works for months. “I’d been thinking about it for a long time, and working
on it with the help of others, and we finally got it into its form,” he
said. “I’ve come to understand as bishop that there is a real confusion on
the part of many people in the Diocese with regard to the relationship of
the moral law to our civil laws. So I wanted to write a letter to clarify
this.”

In the letter, the bishop states that many Catholics
misunderstand the meaning of the so-called “separation of Church and
state,” taking it to mean that the teachings of the Church have no
application to political life. The letter affirms, on the contrary, that
Catholics have the obligation to form their political judgments from
Church teachings, “especially in what pertains to the natural moral law,
that is the order established by God in creation.”

“If the Catholic Church insisted to legislators that
they vote for laws that punish people who steal, no one would find
anything objectionable in that,” said the bishop, explaining his point in
the document. “People all recognize that to take someone else’s property
is a crime. The natural law teaches us that. So also, it teaches that
human life is inviolable.”

Arthur Hippler, director of the Office of Justice and
Peace for the Diocese of La Crosse, concurred that the relationship
between Church and state is at the heart of the pastoral letter’s message.

“While the bishop is addressing our responsibility to
defend innocent life, he does not frame it as if it were an issue, or a
set of issues, the way people refer to pro-life or abortion as an issue,”
said Hippler, who is primarily responsible for promoting the letter in the
Diocese’s 167 parishes. “The bishop sees that this is an indication of a
larger and more fundamental matter, namely, the relation of our civic
responsibility to the moral law.”

Hippler explained that the letter was necessary
because many Catholics “take their bearings from society at large,”
expecting the Church simply to ratify what the rest of society already
believes. “The very reason that the life issues scandalize them,” he said,
“is because society is telling them something else than what the Church is
telling them.”

For Hippler, this is a sign that they do not consider
the Church’s teaching to be authoritative. “That’s why even though it’s
the life issues that are coming up, it’s a sign of the bigger problem,” he
said. “If this were 100 or 150 years ago, it’d be the racial issues –
slavery, segregation – those kinds of things. That would be the friction.”

Bishop Burke affirmed that both the letter and the
notification carry the full weight of his authority as bishop of the
Diocese, even though his current capability to act is one of a diocesan
administrator. Both were signed Nov. 23, the Solemnity of Christ the King,
well before the official announcement of his appointment to St. Louis on
Dec. 2.

Editor’s note: Both the pastoral letter and the
notification can be viewed from the website of the Diocese of La Crosse,
www.dioceseoflacrosse.com.